


Only Cinders Remain

by ioucos



Category: Dark Souls III
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 09:41:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12981336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ioucos/pseuds/ioucos
Summary: You are many things, and you are nothing.





	Only Cinders Remain

**Author's Note:**

> For the best experience possible, I recommend listening to the Soul of Cinder's theme while you read this. Obviously, it's not required, but I _do_ recommend it, because why not.

You are many things, and yet you are nothing.

You are the manifestation of the fire, a last line of defense, a divider. You determine who is worthy, and who is ash. You are the mask of the lords who linked the flame in ages past, and you keep their souls within you, twisted and amalgamated into a deific singularity. You are the fire in all its glory and splendor, in all its power and magnificence.

And yet, you are also nothing. You are a feeble and desperate thing, a reflection of a forever fleeting fire, linked for millennia by those who feared the unknown hidden within the dark, just out of sight, more than death itself. You are the final symbol of a defiance of nature itself, a breaking of the natural order because one fearful old man could not stomach the prospect of a lightless world.

You are a faded and decrepit being, a fire that should have vanished long ago given life and form. You are unwanted and sequestered away in the convergence of all the lands, a ruinous place of all the left-behind remnants of kingdoms across the ages. One wonders whether or not your very purpose is futile itself — is the fire you defend now too weak to even grant ash the very embers it seeks? The fire sputters and fades away into nothing as eons flow past like the oozing lava of one who sought to replicate its very nature.

You are glory and magnificence — an age of sunlight and prosperity, and you are also a fearful nothing — a world that _refuses_ to die, no matter how many times it fades away. You are not just the fire. You are the prospect of dark it brings, and all the shifting ages the struggle between the two entails. You are disparity, now. For does not a fading memory of fire equate to a mere prospect of darkness in strength? A primeval sin has entwined you with your very opposite. There is nothing you will do about this. All you will do is wait.

You wait, eternally, just before the very first flame to ever be gazed upon by the ancients — you are this flame, and you defend it. You wait, eternally, for unkindled ash to seek your embers, as it always has. You wait, eternally, for a rest that will perhaps never come, for you are a fire that may never burn out entirely. Even in the darkest of nights will little sparks of flame, like embers linked by lords past, dance across the horizon, waiting for a champion to come upon them and reignite the cycle. You will wait, eternally, for that day to come.

The many entwined souls within your bosom weigh you down just as much as the fire-linking curse. For you are many beings, and you are no-one.

You are so many forgotten heroes from nameless ages, who, for their own reasons and purposes, linked the flame.

You are the little lord who willed himself to link to fire and overcome a vision of betrayal.

You are the tragic and lonely lord who sought to put a thing most profane to rest without thanks.

You are the lords who were kin of the wolf blood, inheritors of the task of repelling the Abyss, wherever it might arise.

You are the lord who sought to devour the gods and supersede this frail and fragile world you now defend.

You are the lord who sought to reverse undeath itself, but heeded not the warnings of an old scholar of sins.

You are the lord who was chosen by ancient prophecy to follow in the footsteps of the king, and traverse the desolate remnants of old Lordran.

You are, perhaps most of all, the first lord — who, in the end, was left frail and lonely, left desperate and weak. The first lord who burned himself alive with a mere fading fire that was to him the most wondrous thing in his entire life — all his life’s work, a simple flame. You are that flame, and you are that frail, dejected old lord.

You are all of these lords, and you are no-one.

You were the greatest source of light in the world, once, and you cast every shadow.

But now, you are the first and final flame of the world.

You are the cycle of light and darkness. 

You are a little, tiny ember encased within the souls of lords, just waiting to be slain by one worthy of the task. One final champion, perhaps, to usurp you or try and fail to extinguish you. You are, nonetheless, the guardian of the kiln — the tender of the ashy graves.

You are cinder.

**Author's Note:**

> If it wasn't immediately obvious, I worked with the base assumption that the player linked the flame and inherited the order of the world in DS1 and DS2, so yeah.
> 
> Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed! The Soul of Cinder is such a fascinating being to me -- a manifestation of the very cycle of Dark Souls itself, and all of those who have perpetuated it for millennia. So, I wrote a brief, rambly story filled with nonsense about it. Thanks for reading!!


End file.
